Dec22 - Morioka drive to Sanriki Coast a

We were up at 6am and then hit up the convience stores for breakfast by 6:30, we had to visit 5 to find one that actually had food in the hot box. By 7:30am we walking to the car hire in the 3degree weather.

Arriving just before 8am we waited for them to open, and then picked up our hire car. We set off at 8:30am on our way via the 106 expressway for most of the 76km (1:46hr) journey. The 106 has an extrodinate amount of tunnels, before we turned off heading to the 45 along the coast to visit Kumanohara observatory. Arriving at 10:30am, this stop was a quick jump out into the freezing wind and take a few photos.

We then headed about 30mins up the coast and out to Kitayamahara Cape, stopping at a roadside station just beforehand at 11am. Arriving at Kitayamahara at 11:30am, we had fabulous views, but discovered how unfit Dale and I are on the 360 stairs up and down to the Cape. We left the Cape at 12:30pm and headed for our actual destination for the day - Rysendo caves.

It took about 30mins to get to Rysendo caves. We pulled into the first parking lot we saw following gps at 1pm. It was big and pretty empty, and then out of nowhere a guy appears in a kei car and says to follow him to the caves. So we disregarded everything we've ever been taught about following strangers and followed along in our car as he led us about 200m and the pulled into the close carpark right in front of the caves - it had an entrance we would have never found. We thanked the guy and off he drove. Got to love Japanese friendly helpfulness.

We paid the entrance fee and enjoyed exploring the caves that have waters over 98m deep and we climbed over 155 stairs up into the heights of the caves. Oscar was not too happy with the heights, nor the bats that were along the walls very close at one point. The caves were amazing to see and we left about 2:20pm.

We then decided to forgo lunch, or finding food and headed straight back to Morioka, this time via the 455, which went up and over the mountains, a lot of it with snow on the sides of the road. We arrived back in Morioka at 4pm, fueled up the car, and returned it. After this we walked back to the hotel to warm up and rest. At 5:30 it was food time.

We split up for dinner. The kids went to Gusto for pizza and pasta. Hubby and I went back to Nirvana for Nepalese. We enjoyed it just as much the second time around. After dinner we let the kids loose in suraguya where they tried to restrain themselves as we are travelling only with carry-on until we meet our bags at Shiga Kogen, yet we still came out with 3 large plush toys. Off to Aomori at 8am tomorrow.Read more